pynchon-l-digest V2 #7335

[alice wellintown]

Cherrycoke is another unreliable narrator.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> John Bailey:
>
>> I draw a distinction between P's novels which do relentlessly track a
>> leading character - Oedipa, Doc - or two - Benny & Stencil, Mason &
>> Dixon - and the kaleidescopic narratives of GR, VL and AtD. I agree
>> that perhaps the authorial voice in these does align itself with
>> particular characters at many points, but I reckon that overstates
>> things. In fact, in M&D and AtD the authorial voice is more of an
>> hilarious 'character' than the ostensible subjects it narrates. In M&D
>> this voice might be attributable to Rev. Cherrycoke but it wanders off
>> a fair bit. I still maintain that AtD's 'voice' is very much concerned
>> with genres, their imitation and their about-with-messing.
>
> Good stuff! I absolutely agree that it's important to distinguish between
> P's novels when it comes to narrators. M&D seems a bit more complex than
> AtD in that regard, since there is, as you point out, more than one narrator
> (Cherrycoke is the narrator who steals the most of the spotlight, but
> occasionally we visit the frame-narrative, where someone narrates Cherrycoke
> narrating - and what the f*** happens when The Ghastly Fop and Cherrycoke's
> narrative bleed into each other in chapters 53 and 54!? Dodgy stuff.)
>
>> Re-reading AtD at the moment, I was struck by what must be P's only
>> deployment of the first person in fiction - the Chums of Chance author
>> suddenly mentions letters he's (?) received from regular readers.
>
> There are a couple of instances in GR as well where the narrator - or at
> least what seems to be some aspect of the narrator - points to himself.
> There is the passage on pages 738-39, for instance, where an "I" suddenly
> surfaces within brackets. Also, on p. 738 the narrator speaks of Slothrop's
> "chroniclers" (which would include, one supposes, himself) and of the
> lousy Tarot card which fate has dealt him. And on page 755, the narrator
> once again invokes himself as "your correspondent" - which would just
> seem to be a fancy way of saying "I". So the narrator does seem to pop up
> from time to time in GR, although not as clearly as in AtD. B-but who exactly
> is it that flirts "away in the mirrorframe in something green-striped,
> pantalooned, and ruffled" on p. 122?
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